


Ablaze

by Fox1013



Category: Roswell (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-11
Updated: 2007-12-11
Packaged: 2018-01-25 08:50:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1642487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fox1013/pseuds/Fox1013
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bridges aren't the only thing you have to burn. (Liz/Michael, post-Graduation)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ablaze

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to anonymous_sibyl, cadetdru, and annavtree for the betas!
> 
> Written for Syrenslure

 

 

Bridges aren't the only thing you have to burn.

Everyone had to make a choice at some point. Everyone made them on their own terms.

Isabel made hers, when she decide she couldn't take the running anymore and went off to school somewhere so that she could do good.

Max made his, when three weeks after Isabel left he decided that they needed to cut off contact with everyone except each other and focus on staying alive and finding his son.

And Liz made hers, when she said no.

She had loved Max. She had. It wasn't a short infatuation, it wasn't a high school crush. She had loved him like they lived in a fairy tale, and he was her prince charming. But that didn't mean she was willing to give up all of her autonomy just so he could feel like the king of every planet, not just his own.

Maria and Kyle agreed to go with him. Liz and Michael didn't.

The fight was long, and it was brutal. Every possible thing anyone had done wrong over the past three years- hell, the past eighteen- was thrown across the room like a bomb. Any blame that could be assigned was, in a desperate attempt to be the right side, the side that at least kept five of them together. But it just burned the bridges more.

Michael and Liz didn't leave everyone else because they fell in love. They fell in love because they were the only ones left.

It was more than that, obviously. It was the way that Liz's hair fell in her face when she was writing in her journal, or the way that Michael would spend hours out in the woods trying to control his powers. It was the way that Liz sometimes sent postcards to her parents, just letting them know how she was doing, and the way that Michael called Isabel every month or two to make sure that she was okay.

Mostly it was the way that they never got more than one hotel room, with one bed, and the way that Michael would hold on to Liz, not like she needed protecting- that had been Max- but like she needed a friend. More than anything, Liz needed a friend.

Things weren't perfect. Things weren't supposed to be perfect. They weren't perfect _together_. Michael was too rash, too thoughtless, and he wasn't patient enough to actually think things through. Liz was too slow, too contemplative, and she was never willing to take risks, even when they were necessary. Michael wanted to strangle her half the time. Liz wanted to leave him and never come back.

It worked out for both of them.

They set her journal on fire together, out in the middle of nowhere, where it couldn't spread. They made a pit with stones, and the fire grew stronger and stronger as they tore out page after page and threw them in, spark after spark of neatly scrawled _I'm Liz Parker and today_ s going up in flames.

Michael got really into it, egging her on. "Burn it all!" he shouted. "It doesn't matter anymore. It's done. You're not a kid anymore. Fuck the past!"

"Fuck the past," Liz echoed. She sounded surprised, delighted. Liz Parker was not the kind of person who shouted _fuck the past_ in the desert in the dark, staring across a fire at her ex-best-friend's ex-boyfriend, her ex-boyfriend's ex-best-friend.

"Fuck my dad," Michael continued. "Fuck Valenti. Fuck Maria. Fuck Kyle. Fuck Tess. Fuck Max."

He didn't look at Liz on that last one, knowing better, but he didn't have to be so careful; she just laughed. "Fuck Max!" she shouted. "Fuck control! Fuck obligation!"

"Yes!" Michael shouted. "Yes! Get rid of it!"

He hadn't needed to prompt her. "Fuck responsibility!" she yelled. "Fuck planning every last detail! Fuck the weight of the world! Fuck always making the right, smart choice!"

"Finally," Michael said.

"Finally what?"

"I finally have the traveling partner I always wanted."

He didn't- not entirely. Liz was fine with giving up on responsibility and smart choices, in theory, but that didn't mean skipping out on paying for hotel rooms or driving more than five miles above the speed limit. Mostly, from what Michael could tell, giving up on responsibility meant giving up on Max.

He was starting to realize that Liz had actually spent the past few years loosening Max up. Which was a terrifying thought.

"Do you regret it?" Liz asked him one night.

"What?"

"Leaving them. Leaving Max- and everyone."

Michael's laugh was hollow. "Imagine living with Max forever," he said. "But imagine he doesn't just think he's in charge of everyone- people act like he actually is."

"Also a bunch of other aliens are trying to kill you?" Liz offered.

"That too."

They didn't sleep together. Not at first. It felt wrong, somehow. They slept in the same bed but they didn't sleep together.

That changed, after a while. Max had been the one trying to isolate them all as a group, but Michael and Liz were the only ones who had truly learned to only rely on each other. Michael worked, and Liz worked, and it wasn't about finding their home out there. It was finding their home here, on earth. Sometimes that meant tricking the local sheriff. Sometimes that meant avoiding eye contact and wondering how long it would take before being invisible could come without trying so hard.

Sometimes it meant setting your entire past on fire.

It wasn't safe, what they did. It was never safe. But then, it couldn't be. Max had always tried to keep them safe, but it wasn't possible. You just had to live, and pretend that even if every day was your last, at least it was a good day. Michael, Liz was discovering, had had to learn to live with fear, but it was better than being too afraid to live.

"I'm not like Max, you know," Michael told her once. "I can't protect you. I can't bring you back to life." It was part of the traditional you're-human, you-could-have-a-real-life, leave-me-to-my-alien-isolation thing that he pulled sometimes.

Liz looked all around her, at the life they'd managed to build up against all odds, the life without rules and risks and journals. "I think," she said, "you kind of did."

 


End file.
